Myths
by madelinear
Summary: A birthday fic for The Great Kara and She's a Star- happy birthday, girls! Comments on the former glory of the Rouge.


Myths  
by Sugar Princess  
  
  
  
This fic is completely and entirely due to the birthdays of my two Rougettes, Kara and Hannah (a.k.a The Great Kara and She's a Star). This wouldn't have been written and would have remained locked within my brain if not for these two fabulous chicas, so HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY birthday to my girlies!  
  
  
  
  
It was too everything: too fast, too bright, too gaudy, too loud, too colorful. The girls were too beautiful, too distant, too wonderful to be real.  
  
The Moulin Rouge belonged to Harold Zidler as much as eternity belonged to the Parthenon: not in the least. It was a happy illusion that everyone felt compelled to uphold.  
  
Götterdammerung was the fall of the Norse Gods. The Twilight ended the reign of Zeus and his descendants. The end of the Rouge was nothing less spectacular than those. A God and Goddesses in their own right, their end was more than fantastic. But, before its downfall, like the Gods and Goddesses before them, they lived as if they had a lifetime.  
  
The Rouge had belonged, always, to the girls who gave their lives in service. They were the geishas, the slave girls, the priestesses, the muses, the heart and soul of the Rouge. Without them, the Rouge was nothing.  
  
They were Wilis- horribly beautiful, irresistible to all who knew them. Men would die for them, kill for them, give everything they owned up for them- and they, the objects of affections who could no more reciprocate the love felt for them than a God could live as a mortal, would laugh heartlessly as they danced them to their deaths.  
  
The girls of the Moulin Rouge. They sacrificed themselves for the glory of the windmill, trading dignity for the ambrosia that only this life could give, modesty for the Golden Apples of Hera, respectability for the sweet wines of Aphrodite. And for a brief period of time, as quickly lost as Camelot and the ages of the Gods, their forfeits were worth it. Every loss they had suffered had been replaced by smoke-and-mirror substitutes. Besides- who would have thought the end could come?  
  
Their confidence in their position and in their beloved Moulin grew until they truly believed that they were goddesses: immortal, caught in a realm of wealth, beauty and excitement, trapped forever in their own beauty and selfishness. Time would go on forever like this, dancing in their Valhalla with their skirts flying and smiles shining, Valkyries armed with nothing but charm.  
  
They were the beauty of a unicorn with the charm of the leprechaun, the promise of a phoenix with the seductiveness of sirens. They were fairies of enchantment with all the secrecy of the sphinx. They were every myth and more all combined into one incredible package of splendour.  
  
Men could not resist them, as no mortal could resist the advances of Aphrodite. Some, like Adonis, perished from this union, most were forgotten by casual beauties who cared only for their own reflection. The world was at their feet, they could be both impetuous and imperious with impunity. They would never die; they were too beautiful and too brilliant to die.  
  
When the gilded age was over, there was nothing left but shattered mirrors and torn curtains. The institution that they had all believed in so fervently had been abandoned at its hour of need. The structure was ravaged within an inch of its life. The legends were reduced to mere words on a page, things that had no reality save as a fantastic whim of some writer's fancy.  
  
Once printed, the reader could only image the majesty of it all, the unparallelled opulence of the Rouge. The Wilis, Sirens, Valkyries and Goddesses were nothing but women to be scorned at- those who had given their life to a cause and then ran away without retrieving what they had lost. They could never image the sensation of an place that cares nothing for the morrow, for the future, but lives solely in the present, living only for pleasure and good times.  
  
It was over far too soon, the unscathed would murmur, whilst those who had been injuried remembered with misted dreams the myths that they had known 


End file.
